IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v199y2025ics0148296325003303.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Feeling grounded when watching live streaming shows of highly anthropomorphic interactive virtual influencers: An exploratory study on customer opinions

Author

Listed:
  • Xie, Yancong
  • Desouza, Kevin C.

Abstract

Powered by generative artificial intelligence, AI live streaming commerce (ALSC) employs virtual influencers (VI) to promote products. Despite its novelty and hype, research on VIs remains limited. We adopt a novel groundedness theory to study customer engagement in ALSC. Through exploratory interviews, we find that customers can feel grounded in ALSC. Such feelings can be primarily affected by VI characteristics and customer characteristics, which can also affect customers’ purchase motivations. The findings contribute to the ALSC literature by examining the emotional motivations of groundedness in customers’ purchase decisions, in contrast to the existing cognitive focus.The findings also extend the groundedness theory by identifying new sources, contextualized antecedents, and dark sides of groundedness. Additionally, the findings contribute to the VI literature by demonstrating that VIs in ALSC can unexpectedly create engaging customer experiences, which contrasts with the existing notion that customers view VIs as inauthentic and less engaging.

Suggested Citation

  • Xie, Yancong & Desouza, Kevin C., 2025. "Feeling grounded when watching live streaming shows of highly anthropomorphic interactive virtual influencers: An exploratory study on customer opinions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:199:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325003303
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325003303
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115507?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:199:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325003303. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.